Page 49 of Battling the Enemy
“I’ll handle Delaney,” I replied, cold and…just fuckingcold. “You can take her parents and Liam can take the Reynolds.”
“And Winston?” Liam asked.
“I’ll handle him when I’m done with Delaney,” I promised. “Their blissful future is going to be her feeding him through a straw for the rest of their lives.”
Chapter 30
Delaney~
Iwas so irritated, it wasn’t even funny. Not only had this tour turned out to be nothing like I had imagined, I lost my phone, and I missed Deke.
Visiting Dartmouth had been a big eye opener to how much I didn’t want to be on the East Coast while Deke was at Blaineview on the West Coast.
But more irritating than anything else had been when we had all gone out to dinner after the tour was over and the Reynolds had joined us. My parents tried to play it off as a happy coincidence, but I knew better. I also started to question the loss of my phone. Had I had it on me, I would have called an Uber, gone to the airport, and bought a ticket home.
Now, it was late evening, and I was at the store, buying a new phone. Sure, the sales associate was kind enough to activate my backup and all my apps, but it was still a pain in the ass. Not to mention, my parents were having after dinner cocktails with the Reynolds and they were seriously expecting me to show up and play polite. And, once upon a time, I might have-but not anymore.
Knowing Deke had my back, and was waiting at home to slay dragons for me, gave me a sense of strength I never knew I possessed. Sure, I wasn’t a complete pushover, but I never viewed myself as strong as Ava, as brave as Roselyn, or as badass as Emerson.
But being with Deke made me feel all those things.
I knew I had been played by my parents, but I was actually grateful for the experience because I knew now, without a doubt, I wanted to be with Deke wherever he went.
The second the sales associate finished setting up my phone, it started chiming uncontrollably with notifications, missed calls, and message alerts.
The first notification I saw was Ava’s text message begging me to call her ASAP, so I did. “Ava?”
“Oh, my God, Delaney,” she cried breathlessly. “Where are you?”
“I’m still in New Hampshire,” I told her. “I lost my phone and had to buy a new one. I just walked out of the store and I was about to order an Uber back to the hotel, but your text was urgent.”
“So, you haven’t been online at all today?”
“No,” I answered, suddenly nervous. “Even if I hadn’t lost my phone, I wouldn’t have answered it during the tour. That would have been rude.”
I could hear Ava taking a deep breath over the phone, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “Delaney,” she whispered desperately, “there’s a picture of you and Winston with both your parents at Dartmouth with a caption about new beginnings or something like that.”
I could feel my lungs tighten up with the unbelievability of her words. “Ava,” I breathed, “Winston and his parents are here, that’s true, but there’s no picture. We didn’t take any pictures together.”
“Delaney, what the hell are you doing there with Winston and his parents?” she asked incredulously.
“I’m not here with them,” I stressed. “My parents ambushed me, trying to change my mind about marrying Winston. But there’s no-”
“Delaney, pull up your social media feed,” she said, interrupting. “There’s a picture.”
I quickly did what she suggested, and sure as shit, staring up at me was the picture we all took last year when we had all taken a trip to New York. I had mentioned wanting to go to Dartmouth back then, and to humor me, we’d gone to the campus and taken a group selfie.
Scrambling to get back on the phone, I said, “Ava, that’s the picture from last year when we’d all gone to New York.”
“Well, Winston posted it making it look like it’s from today,” she said sadly.
“Fuck…” I muttered.
“Delaney, you need to call Deke, and you need to call himnow,” she groaned. “He’s going to be pissed, chic.”
“I have my purse on me,” I said. “Every…everything else at the hotel can stay. It’s just clothes and stuff. I’m heading to the airport. I’m flying home now, okay.”
“Text me when you’re getting ready to land, and I’ll pick you up,” she offered.
